Virgin Megastores

Virgin Megastores Acquired by Real Estate Firm Related Companies

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on August 20, 2007 - 11:50am.

Los Angeles - Richard Branson's Virgin Entertainment Group has reached a deal to sell its chain of eleven Virgin Megastores in North America to Related Companies, a real estate development firm.

HMV and Virgin Megastores Throw Down Gauntlet to Apple in U.K.

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on September 6, 2005 - 6:19am.

London -- HMV, the largest specialist music seller in the U.K., announced that has launched a new digital music service giving consumers online access to a library of more than 1.3 million songs. The news follows a similar announcement made last week by Virgin Megastores, the second-largest music chain in the U.K. Many analysts say that Virgin Megastores and HMV's inclusion into an already highly competitive market is likely to spark a digital music war. The U.K. music download market, while still relatively small, is expected to grow by leaps and bounds. About 500,000 songs, for example, were downloaded legally from the Internet in all of last year; now, about 500,000 songs are legally downloaded every week. Industry experts predict that online music sales in the U.K. will nearly double from about $63 million this year to more than $120 million in 2006 and approximately $480 million by the year 2010.